Pilsen Spectres Intro

This blog is kind of a platform for our documentary project "It's fun to be Bohemian" dealing with the history, transformation and present state of Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago.
After the web page is established, it will be the place of communication (hopefully) of ideas, asking questions, making comments, swearing, bomb throwing, mushroom cooking, etc. (does blogspace already enable this?).

So what is this project about? It's about ghosts, dreaming, longing for a place where you aren't but would like to be, feelings of deja vu, paradoxes of patriotism in a perished community (patriotism inside out, the only one we like). And about this Pilsen village in Chicago which used to be, once upon a time, the largest Czech (and Slavic, of course, Kenneth) neighborhood in all America. The peak of immigration took place in 1907 which is exactly one hundred years from now! Nowadays, it is really hard to find some Czechs or Bohemians. But there are yet still some bohemians there, fortunately.

Yes, we've been making videodocumentary about this Chicago Pilsen. We call it Plzeň (it is pronounced and written a little bit different, yes, believe me, Ovidio). I started doing it when I was living there on the 19th Street in one disintegrating appartment in the most beautiful house in Pilsen with thousands kinds of Mexican peppers on the roof. I was there since September 2005 till July 2006. Michal visited me in December and again in June-July. Making a movie in/about Pilsen was originally his idea. And we both are coming back this February (yes, Jose, I promised December, but I really couldn't make it, perdona me, cabron). I have some things there to handle:

1) my yellow bike which you guys promised to send me. oh, that last-night-promises....
2) we forgot to shoot that storks and European-style-meadows on otherwise-totally-Mexican-style-murals.
3) visit newly open "Bohemian cafe". What a name!
4) say hallo to all the neighbors from the 19th Street and around (by the way, you still owe me 15 bucks, Eddie!)
5) prove that Los Checos no son muertos, no y no y no, Rene. Kind of "Los Checos Back to Pilsen" idea.